


Eyes for Tomorrow

by ImproperDancer



Series: Campaign Stories [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Caev Threla, D&D, Internal Turmoil, Introspection, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 09:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18258200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImproperDancer/pseuds/ImproperDancer
Summary: Windsor and Nine have arrived at the Semansish Hunting Grounds, only to find that the Lizardfolk settlement has been taken over by a strong tribe of Orcs, lead by Renrok. After an audience with Renrock, with whom Windsor and Nine once fought alongside, a debt is laid claim to. Having gained the allegiance of Renrok and his forces of Orcs and Lizardfolk Windsor and Nine are led to their temporary sleeping quarters. Windsor takes some time to himself and reflects on who he has become.





	Eyes for Tomorrow

The Orc strode ahead, carving a path through the encampment. Other Orcs, of varying sizes but all immense, moved aside as this Orc walked towards the collection of tents and canvassed structures that marked the sleeping quarters for the people who had not ventured to reside in the subterranean tunnels below the land they stood on.

As he arrived in front of a tent he had seemingly targeted he stopped before it, turning around and folding his arms across his hulking chest. He snorted through his nostrils, his large tusks jingling slightly with the collection of decorative rings embedding within the pointed teeth. He looked down at the Elf before him and made a rough gesture with his head in the direction of the tent.

Windsor stood, hands down by his side in clenched fists, looking the Orc intensely in the eye as he had any time any of the enormous people looked to him. Noting the Orc’s head gesture Windsor followed the movement to the front of the animal-skin tent before him.

It was small and crudely made but was obviously built for utility, not comfort. It would keep the rain off, the wind out but otherwise that was the extent that this tent would offer from what Windsor could see. 

He turned his head up to face the Orc, again catching him in the eyes. Windsor held the gaze for a moment longer than he knew would be considered proper in the more gentle circles of society. He wasn’t in gentle society anymore, he was about as far away from that as he could be right now. After holding the Orcs gaze for that moment he simply cocked an eyebrow at the man, who easily had at least a foot’s height over him. The Orc reacted as Windsor had thought, frowning and giving a low guttural growl but leaning to lift open the entrance flap to the ad’hoc tent. With a curt nod, Windsor walked forward, maintaining his posture as stopped just before dipping into the tent. 

“Thank you so kindly” Windsor spoke lightly but firmly, his voice soft but he kept his volume raised and his tone perhaps a little hard, “You can go back to your daily tasks.”

The Orc, still holding the flap open, snorted a grunt in response and replied “We are supposed to stand guard.” The Orc glanced to behind Windsor, where upon turning Windsor could see his comrade, Nine, having something of her own show down with the Orc assigned to her.

“Yes, well” Windsor started, turning back to face this Orc and again hold his gaze “I appreciate the concern for our safety but that won’t be necessary. Thank you and Goodbye.”

As Windsor duck under a supporting log to enter the tent the Orc grunted again, a little more aggressively this time “Renrok told us to stand guard here and we-“

“And you can thank your Chief for me” Windsor announced, staying in the tent and pointedly facing into the tent, not looking back to the Orc “But we have no need of your services. Goodbye.”

There was an unbearably long moment of silence. Windsor could hear the grip of the Orc’s huge fingers tighten as the canvas squeaked and stretched under the immense pressure from the angry grip. His breath became a little more laboured as he became increasingly frustrated with this small slim well-dressed Elf who had come prancing into their encampment like he owned the place. The moment continued on for another several, immeasurable seconds before the flap as whipped shut as the frustrated Orc stormed off away from the tent, muttering several things Windsor didn’t understand but could venture a guess at the nature of such comments. He suspected they were likely nothing he wanted to actually understand.

A breath of air escaped Windsor’s lungs, having been trapped in his lungs for longer than was comfortable during the moment of tension. His grip on the handle of his rapier relaxed and he thanked several Gods he didn’t have to use his swords this day. His back loosened, shoulders dropped and he rolled his neck to relieve the strain from holding himself to feverishly straight.

Windsor took a moment to breathe for a second as he took in his temporary bedsit. The tent was larger, he had to admit, than it had first appeared. It was large enough that it held a rudimentary bed sized to an Orc and left enough space for a large empty wooden box and an area in which Windsor could comfortably swing a cat, if such a bizarre mood were to take him.

Throwing his bags onto the bed Windsor sat down on the bed, which was much harder than he expected it to be, and took a moment to just remain sat upright, looking off into nothingness. He closed his eye and took a few breaths, bringing in air through his nostrils and releasing it from his mouth. He then brought his hands before him and buried his face into them.

He held this posture for a time. He wasn’t sure how long but he was certain it was more than a few seconds. Pulling his hands away from his face he shook his head and smiled to himself. What in all the Gods’ names are you doing, Windsor he thought to himself, nearly laughing at his circumstances. Not six months ago you were laughing with Jaes, sharing wine with the Sunderguard captains and feasting in halls of gold and silver. Nevermind the ordeal with Ahmell, now you’re in the middle of an Orc camp having just struck an alliance to bring down the very court from which you came.

Windsor opened a bag and rummaged through it as he thought to himself. His hands burrowed through the clothes and supplies, fingers brushing up against cloth, leather, and metal as they searched for the surface they were hunting. They slid across the smooth, cold circle which alerted them to having found their prey. His finger wrapped around the object, constricting and locking into place as they wrenched it from its home.

The small round mirror reflected Windsor’s sharp eyes back to him. He held his own gaze, almost instinctively resolving against the stare before blinking heavily and sighing. The black paint across his face, smothering his face from ear to ear, an inch or so above and below his eyes, rendered him near unrecognisable. Black lines intersecting above and below to almost visually distort the identifiable features of his face. Black, dyed hair dangled before his forehead, the shortness of it still surprising him. The hair tumbled and rose from his head like dark straps of fine leather as he ran his hand through it.

The makeup may have hidden his face but he could still see through the paint and see his face, soft and delicate. His hair was no longer golden and bright nor did it flow softly down his shoulders or follow the gentle playing of the wind but still he could see his hair, soft and delicate. 

They weren’t his eyes, however. These eyes, the cold and sharp blue looking like a stark winter morning, riddled with cracks of azure that shattered this winter morning like a bolt of wicked lightning. These eyes were the eyes of a person who was lost and angry. Their frosty leer burning against all that they saw. These were the eyes of somebody who was uncertain but held that uncertainty with a grip of iron and ice.

No, these were not Windsor’s eyes. These eyes were prepared to do things that he was not sure that he could. Windsor broke his stare with the man before him and tossed aside the mirror that held him.

~ ~ ~

The sound scraped within the tent, rhythmic and never breaking pattern. The whetstone’s body being dragged across the smooth, sharp surface of the blade. The sound would begin deep and sturdy, the Elf’s strong and confident fingers gripping the stone as he slide it from the base of the blade, were it formed to the rough, bark-encrusted hilt. The sound then rose, become almost shrill as the blade thinned out and ended in the narrow point of the rapier, ringing out slightly as the stone flicked into the air with a flourish. The ringing would hardly have a moment to dissipate before the stone again kissed the blade on the opposite side after the lithe Elf had turned the blade in his lap with the barest of movement.

He knew he didn’t have to do this but Windsor had grown accustomed to caring meticulously for his swords. Despite the Fae magic imbued within them that kept from weathering or ever becoming dull he continued to find a solace and respite in sitting down, supplies resting on a cloth beside him, and caring for his swords as his mother had shown nearly two centuries past.

The light of day had long since surrendered and Windsor had lit a lantern by his bed and worked away in the dancing light of the flame. One sword laid on a cloth on the floor, gleaming a flash of green in the light. He wasn’t certain as to whether the hour he had spent carefully sharpening and polishing it had done anything but he felt better having done so. Magic or no, a sword needs to be cared for lest it go restless. That’s what mother had always said. 

The flame spat and convulsed suddenly, throwing waves of shadows across the tent as a gust of air caught the lantern. Windsor’s pointed ears perked and his head snapped to the entrance of his tent, his grip on the sword in his lap instinctively tightening around the handle.

A dark figure stood in his tent, arm folded before them. Bathed in shadows that appeared to linger against them far more than any shadow should. A glimmer in the dark, their eye tore through the dancing dark and light of the flickering light, piercing Windsor harder than any arrow could. 

Windsor sighed with relief and relaxed, loosening his grip “Nine, you really should knock before you enter someone’s chambers, I could have been in a state of undress.”

The monk remained silent, maintaining her stoic stance as she kept firmly in the shadows of the tent. 

Windsor stood, resting both swords on his bed and he leaned back, stretching his back and being rewarded with a string of satisfying cracks.

“We need to form a plan, Windsor.” Nine spoke with her hard and flat voice. Although she did not speak in a particularly raised volume her words filled the tent nonetheless, her presence dominating the space that she and Windsor shared.

Windsor sighed more heavily, resting a hand on his hip and running his face with the other.

“A plan of what to do with these Orcs and Lizardfolk” he replied tiredly, looking to Nine.

Nine nodded, so slight that Windsor had to second guess himself as to whether she even nodded at all “We have what you wanted. We have an army. What’s next?”

Windsor looked to Nine, meeting the gaze of her single eye, an eyepatch concealing the space that once held the other eye. He tried to read her expression but even without the shadows obscuring her he knew that she was almost entirely unreadable. He was thankful to have the support of someone as grounded and strong as she but sometimes he did wish she was a little more responsive.

“Well, I think we move forward with what he spoke about” Windsor said, unrolling the sleeves of his shirt back down to cover his arms now that he wasn’t handling his cleaning tools “That seems like the next logical step.”

Nine, as Nine does, said nothing. She simply looked to Windsor. Few people could speak as loudly with a look as she did. Windsor nodded, more to himself than to her, as he cuffed his sleeves “We have Renrok’s allegiance which grants us a considerable armed force which not even the combined forces of Jaes and Ichabod can ignore”

“Getting into a siege is risky” Nine said, her posture and body not moving an inch as she spoke “If our infiltration doesn’t work then we have sent many more lives to their doom.”

Windsor nodded, keeping eye contact with Nine as his brow furrowed. He had known that he risked so many more lives than just their own but to hear it aloud was a something he had yet to become accustomed to.

“If our infiltration doesn’t work” he responded quietly, feeling much less in control faced with Nine alone “Then we have sent ourselves, these people and perhaps so many more to their doom. This has to work, Nine.”

The silence was deafening and Windsor stood on his side of the tent, bathed in the warm dancing light of the lantern. Nine stood in the writhing shadows, drenched in the cold dark.

“I came to terms with my own doom a long time ago” Nine finally said, her voice quieter now but no less firm “And I accept whatever fate comes to me. This is your plan, however. These peoples’ fate rests in your hand. You have to be willing to accept that you may be the architect of their demise.”

Windsor looked away. Nine’s words carving into his chest like an icy blade, breaking ribs and eviscerating his heart. The words she spoke were true and he had known this was to be something for him to come to terms with but he did not believe he could ever come to such terms. 

He could feel Nine’s eye burrowing into his soul.

“Are you prepared to inflict doom upon these people, Windsor?”

He caught his reflection. The small, round mirror that lay upon the bed. Those eyes staring back at him. The eyes which he did not recognise. The eyes of a man who was angry and lost. But no longer uncertain. The eyes that burned with ice and crackled with lightning. Yes, these were Windsor's eyes. These eyes were prepared to do things that he was sure he could.

“I think I am, Nine” Windsor replied, turning to face her. His gaze strong and resolute “I have to be.”

“Good.” Nine announced. With the barest of movement, she turned and left the tent, the flap whipping open and closed far swifter than it should have. Before Nine had barely spoke the word she was gone and the tent was left with just Windsor, standing in the flickering orange light that filled the tent.

“I have to be.”


End file.
